BOOKS 69 Continuation of a Masterpiece-Gugnhaim Is Gugnhaim-"The Trouble" 1\ o oy... , S W HEN the first ' ':', ! . $ ::_;c V 0 I u m e 0 f , ] ules Romains' se- . " M f G d "": :-' -<6 rles, en 0 00 -"1 r r lll'" ,; Will," astonished us ..J.I 'i r 711 , ast summer, Amer- -..I(!:,.II (. - lcan readers must have felt somewhat as Englishmen did after having finished the first few parts of "The Pickwick Papers." It was only natural to ask, with much beating of the heart, can he keep it up? Can this enormous projected epic of con- temporary France, so auspiciously be- gun, really retain greatness and coher- ence throughout the arrogant score of volumes M. Romains is planning? The answer seems to be a pro tempore yes. The second volume, "Passion's Pilgrims," is, if possible, finer than the first, more acute, more subtle, richer in characters, and less dependent for its interest on the QlÙnette intrigue, which smelt ever so slightly of melo- drama. To preclude all ambiguity, I here by throw this department's hat in the ring and opine that M. Romains is a master. The scene of "Passion's Pilgrims" remains Paris, the time the autumn of 1908. The wonder and com- plexity of Paris (appar- en tly this is to be one of the ma j or motifs of the whole series) reach us through the alert and agonizingly sensitive minds of the two young stud en ts, ]erphanion and ] allez. Quinette, the intellectual criminal, treads his subtle, per- verse path into the in- ner circles of revolu- tionary intrigue. This gives Romains a chance to expose the political cancers of prewar Eu- rope. Our understand- ing of the state of Euro- pean capitalism is sud- denly illuminated as we spy upon the private lives of Sammécaud and De Champcenais, oil mag- nates. \Ve watch the liberal politician Gurau as, without knowing it, he sells out to the oil industry; and, fascinat- ed, follow the labyrin- thine process whereby he builds up an amazing rationalization of his act. The hypnotic dream of monopoly is illus- trated, from another point of view, by \Vazemmes and Haverkamp, who be- gin the patient task of establishing a corner in Paris real estate. And some- how, though the tone of this volume is not at all grim or foreboding, we feel, in every chapter, the first faint stir- rings of an imminent European cata- clysm. The dominating theme, howevet:, is neither politics nor industry. "Passion's Pilgrims" is primarily concerned with the varieties of erotic experience. Ro- mains is perhaps the first major novel- ist since D. H. Lawrence to write of love in such a way as to break down all the facile cynicisms of twentieth- century man. Here his virtuosity ap- proaches the incredible. He is equally successful whether he depicts the pro_ a vincial J erphanion writhing in the coils of youthful lust; or J allez, sentimen- tally retrieving in imagination his boy- hood romance; or Madame de Champ- cenais, hysterically frigid before the ad- vances of Sammécaud; or the old maid Mlle. Bernardine, cruelly, terribly re- vealing to the virgin ] eanne the final secret of physical love; or the manicur- ist Renée casually eXplaining the basis of a healthy, sensual marriage. Passion, politics, industry, revolu- tion-even these do not begin to ex- haust the themes Romains handles with such confident power. In six pages he renders for us an hour in the life of the dog Macaire so that the world of the canine becomes more vivid than our own. He shows us a great man, ] ean ] aurès, and makes us feel his greatness. He exposes, with an insider's malice, the pretentiousness of the literary life in the person of George Allory, the critic, and its tragic reality ir: a genuine poet like Moréas. He seems to have lived for years on intimate terms, not so much with a variety of characters as with the whole population of a great city: society romancers, paules de luxe, professors of literature, secret-service agen ts, real-estate speculators, school- girls, manicurists, abbés, chauffeurs, coachmen, nymphomaniacal lady novel- ists, revolutionaries, milliners' assistants, poets, dogs, and orators. This book is denser in inciden t than a year's file of the Times, more ex- citing than a honeymoon, wittier than all the play of Mr. Coward taken to- gether, and in intellectual grasp and human sym- pathy the peer of any Continental work since " Th M . M ." e aglc ountaln. Note to readers, cynical or bewildered: The fore- going is not an advertise- ment. í } fJ / ( E! '/.(^ii Y ì : '._ : ,., _ l . P . 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",,-%-'..;r- ,'."Ii' & ('Can the American Express guarantee that I won't be sterilized while passing through Germany?" W HEN he established his admirable F oun- dation, little did he reck, did Mr. Guggenheim, that one day he would be something approximating a sun-myth among the simple peasants of Yugo- slavia. It appears that Louis Adamic, born a Yugoslav, won a Gug- genheim Fellowship and repaired to his native vil- lage, to find that he him- self was already a legend- ary hero and that hIs patron, in the exact words